TPA 38

I had a nightmare last night. I was back at my call center job. I spent five years in that hell answering questions for fat women on why their clothes didn't fit. That kind of job is one that no one should have. They made us buy food at a grocery store so that we could stay on the phone longer. We bought it with our own money. They forced us to sit in these chairs for hours answering call after call after call. Then, I met a woman who wanted to blow up the building. I had to join her. 

It reminds me of that short story "A Deer in the Works" in which a man chases a deer in a factory as his first job.

I'm really tired and depressed today. I didn't get a lot of sleep and I just have to wait until my medicine makes me feel better. It won't always be like this, I'll be better soon. I just have to be patient. 

I have this playlist on Youtube called "Mental Masochism." I've been watching it a lot lately. It's a playlist of things that make me cringe or grind my teeth. Lately, I've been focused on the final days of Hanna Barbara's cartoon empire. This includes the Tom and Jerry Kids Show and Flinstone Kids. Why would they call it "Flintstone kids" when only one of them is called that is a dumb idea. Both of these shows were mental agony to watch as a kid. They weren't funny, they weren't creative, and it felt like a blantant attempt to say "Hello, fellow kids." These shows were awful and were the downfall of Hanna Barbara, in my opinion. So if I have a bad day and need to cringe and look at something that 's worst than anything I could think of, I watch this playlist. It's a bad habit but it's a good way for my brain to turn off at night. 

I binge watched the first season of Vox Machina and it was pretty good. Don't know how I feel about all the deaths in it. I'm not in the best of moods to watch people die but to kill children too is something that conflicts with my emotions. They kill people in one scene and make a joke in the next. It kills the mood that they're going for. And guys, don't ever crack a joke after someone dies a horrible death. It's just tasteless. The other problem I have is that one character's arc is complete. Percival de Rolo has had his day and won over his demons. It was a great story but now he's just...there. What else could he do, how else could his character evolve? That's the problem with focusing too much on one character, it becomes difficult for the story to move on. While I am curious about what happens next, the focus on Percy was so great that it's strange for him to take a back seat to the rest of the story. There needs to be more to his problems and there is, there's a person who tortured him still kicking around but that's a leftover compared to what he just went through. I'll say it again, great storytelling but I wanted more of a focus on one character. I suppose I'm more into hero-centric stories than I am into group tales. 

I spoke with my writing friend today. She's always so encouraging, especially today when I don't feel like writing. I need more people like that in my life. It's important to get out of your own head and just write. Don't think too much about it, that's what Ray Bradbury says. My friend and I talked about how difficult it is to write a story vs. what I'm writing now. Here, I can let the flow come out but when I'm writing a story, I have to dam the river or thought. I need a dam guide, as my dad would joke. It's harder to stop and think than it is to write on this blog.

I listened to my "Joel Box" today. It's what I call this small cube that has daily short sermons from Joel Osteen. His sermons are always full of encouragement. When I went to the Vineyard church, I was preached to by a former college professor. I was lectured to, now that's not a bad thing at all. It's important to know that we have to have some focus on the lesson or we we'll be in church all day. I remember reading history books talking about three hour services. Three hours. That's twice as long as today's sermons. The pastor was great but he didn't always get into the Holy Spirit. Compare that to when I went to Life City church where the pastor always tried to get into the spirit and how the sermons would sometimes go off course. That's also fine. The only way that's bad to preach is by condeming your congregation. I've heard of pastors that don't have the love of God in them and they speak as if God is going to smite us. Then we have my current pastor whom I watch online: Bill Johnson. He seems to be able to blend the two styles in a wonderful way. The problem with him is that he's of the mindset of the old guard, he still thinks the most important event in a person's life is to be a minister. I was watching a video of his where he was speaking about the destiny in your life. Then he went off on the importance of being a missionary. I have no desire to travel to the edges of the world to preach the gospel. That is not my destiny, and if it is, I'll reject it. I want to be a writer and I think I'll work on my Cain story when i get home today.

Recently, I bought a game called "Palworld." It's an obvious Pokemon knock-off where you capture creatures to make them fight or work for you. You can even capture bad humans and have them do chores for you, like a slave. I'm not kidding about that. But there are two areas where the game has gotten in trouble, besides capturing humans. First, the company that made this game, Pocketpair, has made previous games before Palworld and has left them in an unfinished state. It's great that this company has a big hit on it but they need to fix their previous games because they were bought in the hopes that they would be finished. That's the problem with early access, things happen that prevent the games from being completed or people give up on their games or they get greedy and give up. Or all three. It's difficult for Steam to police these companies that don't want to finish a game. In fact, it's both impossible and not their job to fix the designer's problems. The second issue is with the Pokemon Company. Nintendo has sued Palworld over copyright infringement. This is ridiculous, several other games mimicing Pokemon's style have cropped up on Steam. One I like is called "Casset Beasts," where you record monsters on your tape player and use them in battle. It's obvious that these games are paying tribute to the Pokemone games that the designers grew up with. Which is good because there is a need for competition and the Pokemon games have become very lax of late. The last two entries were broken, buggy messes that needed patches. The current game, named ZA, is overweighted with tutorials and hand-holding with a bare-minimum effort towards making a new game. In fact, the battle system is lifted off another game called Xenoblade which only adds to Nintendo's hypocracy. To add to their sins, the game promises a DLC that adds more content and the ending to the game. That's right, they lopped off the ending to their own game to sell it back to the player for another thirty bucks. Who's foolish enough to do that to a player? It's an insult. Like having the ending of a book cut off and sold to you at an extra cost. That said, I'm going to go play Palworld now. 

I surprised myself, I got to a thousand words today. I didn't think I had the strength to get to a hundred.